Materials

Miniature Painting

Islamic miniature painting is generally understood to mean small paintings that are or once were part of a manuscript, used as a frontispiece or an illustration for a text. Drawings and individual paintings have, however, also been preserved. They were either sketches or were intended to be placed as independent works of art in an album.

The miniatures usually had a paper base, but cardboard and in rare cases cotton or silk cloth were also used. The brilliant colors are usually opaque.

The oldest preserved miniature paintings were made in around the year 1000, but not until around 1200 were they found in larger numbers. Islamic miniature painting is often categorized rather summarily into four regional schools: the Arab, the Persian, the Indian, and the Ottoman Turkish.

Double frontispiece painting from a copy of Jami’s Yusuf wa Zulaykha. “Picnic in a Tree House”

Iran, Qasvin; 1550-1570
Each leaf: 28.5 × 19 cm

As is so often the case in Persian manuscripts, this frontispiece has nothing to do with the main text. The subject of the painting is a preparation for a small gathering, where the protagonists are the two young men relaxing in a tree house erected in a plane tree.

What makes the painting so interesting is what happened after the manuscript was completed.

A later owner had religious scruples about owning a manuscript filled with figurative paintings. A closer look shows that he meticulously and with some care painted a thin red line across the necks of all the living persons (including the slaughtered animal). He symbolically killed them all. No one – neither God nor man – would be able to accuse him of owning images of living beings.

There is no actual prohibition against images in the Koran, but the hadith, traditions of the words and life of the Prophet Muhammad, note that those who make or own paintings would fare badly on the Day of Judgment